The Backrooms | Paranormal Deep Dive / Iceberg | Ep #58

0:02 Welcome stranger, to Madam Strange ways, where I, Madam Strange Ways, usually narrate your true strange stories of the unexplained. Today, however, you're joining me for a strange deep dive, AKA a strange dive into the topic of the back rooms. We'll look at the strange truth behind this strange liminal horror setting and try to understand its strange origins. Whether you're a skeptic, A believer, or some secret third thing, join me as I share my strange research and even stranger observations. Along the way. I'll also drag you down a slew of strange rabbit holes, kicking and screaming if needs must.

0:44 Before we get to the kicking and screaming, however, the strangest of shout outs to my Patreon patrons TJ Hotter of the Tapes of Trepidation podcast, G Man Music. Ted, Keith and Tori, thank you so much to my Feral Fiendish 5 for supporting the show. Hear your name at the beginning of every episode, get a free sticker, and get bonus content like guided sleep Meditations and Madam Strange Notes episodes for joining the Patreon today at patreon.com/madam. Strange Ways the Thunder's a paid actor if you're curious, and it's about to rain Hellcats and Hell Hounds out there. The Hellcats and Hell Hounds are also paid actors, so you know what that means. Settle in for a strange dive episode all about the back rooms here with Madam Strangeways.

1:50 If you're not careful and you no clip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the back rooms where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum humbuzz, and approximately 600 million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.

2:44 Ah yes, the backrooms. The backrooms. I definitely knew what the backrooms were when I started research on this episode. Definitely, definitely. You know, in case you don't know what the backrooms are you not me, In case you don't know. How do we put this in a strange nutshell for you without getting too lost and other more insidious backrooms along the way? Hmm. OK, so in a strange nutshell about the size of a Istachio, the Backrooms are effectively an online community horror creeyasta project that sawned from a single paragraph long text post in response to a photo of an empty furniture store turned hobby store that was taken in 2002 and posted on 4 Chan in 2019.

3:35 Now if you just Google the Backrooms, probably the very first photo that's going to pop up is this photo of this abandoned furniture store. But you can also pop on over to my Instagram page and it should be. Up there as well. And I don't think that I have ever shared a less helpful strange nutshell with you. So hold on, hold on from the. Wow. From the creepypasta wiki. The Backrooms is a containment fiction horror concept involving A labyrinthine, seemingly endless maze of rooms and environments, credited with popularizing the idea of liminal spaces in online horror culture. Put a pen in that. Put a pen in liminal spaces. We will get back to it. Because in a larger, strange nutshell, I don't know, roughly what do you think?

4:19 Roughly the size of a walnut. No bigger than a walnut. A pecan or a pecan? I. Guess if you're nasty and the strange nutshell around the size of a pecan. The backrooms is a massive online phenomena that started just as a single creepypasta that has spawned countless other creepypastas. 52,000 YouTube videos and counting. 22 of those videos having been made by someone named Kane Pixels or Kane Parsons put a pin in that as well. The backgrounds have also spawned between 37 and hundreds of video games, mostly indie, about 200,000 Google searches a month, tons of merchandise and a feature film coming out soon. By a 24.

5:03 Yes that a 24. Hereditary, Midsomar or Midsummer. I don't know the witch or the the witch. Because it's 2 VS you know, like in the logo, OK. Pearl and now the Backrooms. It just seems crazy. The original photo that the Backrooms is associated with, which is part of the post that it came from, has been considered a liminal space, which like I said, we'll get into momentarily. But liminality and liminal spaces and liminal horror predate the Backrooms. But it is probably credited accurately with popularizing liminal spaces. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, OK? Because this is a strange dive episode after all.

5:45 And I've got many pages of notes, I think 13, which I thought was appropriate because I finished the notes slash script on Friday the 13th. So we've got plenty to go down. We will go deep down into the strange rabbit hole. We will discuss the lore, the history, the rise of the back rooms, and we'll also discuss the eeriness of liminal spaces while dragging you down a bunch of strange rabbit holes along the way. Of course now some of you y'all go down willingly, but you know it would be fun if you would kick in the scream for me, it would be more fun if you didn't act like you liked it if you could kick and scream while I'm dragging you down those strange rabbit holes.

6:28 Thank you very much. Now I wanted very badly to also discuss the mall world in this episode because it is a perfect fit. It would be absolutely perfect. I even wanting to talk about the mall world for almost as long as I've had the podcast. This would have been the perfect fit. But like I said, I have 13 pages on just the backroom. So unfortunately, the mall world will have to have its own episode. Do you know what the mall world is? Do you want to know? Are you curious? Let me know, madamstrangeways@gmail.com. Let me know if you want to hear more about the Walt Mall world because I want to talk about it. So to start, I want to share the catalyst for the entirety of the back rooms as we know it, which we did just listen to at the beginning, at the opening of the episode. It's just 78 words.

7:13 That's all in an image on May 12th, 2019, not May 13th, which is listed in a bunch of places which I don't understand. It was definitely May 12th. Anyway, on May 12th, 2019, on the anonymous message board 4 Chan, some rando whose identity we still don't know posted in response to a thread ON/X, which is the paranormal themed board on 4 Chan. The original thread requested that users post disquieting images that just feel off, which is effectively a long way of saying liminal images, but I guess that term wasn't super super popular at the time since the Backrooms kind of popularized it. Anyway, The original thread included one picture to kick things off and to set the mood of eerie liminal spaces that they were looking for.

8:03 That picture has become permanently associated with the creation of the Backrooms. But that image had been posted many times since 2011. Well 2012 or 2011 ish. So the first time it was posted was not 20, 19. There was just something different about this time, something about the combination of the photo and the text. So the image in question is what looks like a retro. And by retro, did you know that retro is not that old? Retro can mean what is it 25 years ago, so 2001, 2000? I hate it. I. Hate it. Anyway, the image is what looks like a retro digital photograph of a large carpeted room with fluorescent lights and dividing walls.

8:47 Everything is sickly yellow and it's unmistakably liminal in nature. I promise we will get to liminality more in a bit, but just picture the feeling of seeing your school at night with no kids in the halls and the lights are out. Or even if the lights are on. Or a picture, eerie photos at night of like an abandoned swing set just kind of gives you a weird feeling. Just keep that in mind. So then here comes some anonymous rando, like I said, with just two sentences that spawn to the entirety of the back rooms. And that's the post. You heard of the beginning? I'm just going to read it again. If you're not careful and you no clip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the back rooms where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum buzz, and approximately 600 million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear anything wandering around nearby because it sure as hell has heard you. I think the word moist instead of damp is targeted because so many people hate the word moist, which really reminds me of the show Dead Like Me.

9:55 Any Dead Like Me fans out there, let me know man of strangewiz@gmail.com. That was a great show into too soon, Mandy Patinkin. Great job. Anyway, you may be wondering now like you did maybe possibly wonder at the beginning, what does no clip mean in that sentence? Well, we'll get to that. Put a pin in that. Count how many pens you have. You better have extra 'cause we got a lot of them. If you've never even heard of the back rooms, or maybe you only know about it in passing as you wonder to yourself, when did I become so out of touch with the youth and what's cool and hip? You just might be familiar with one of these other pieces of media which actually gives you a really good idea of the Backrooms. There's the video game. The Stanley Parable came out in 2013. This came out six years prior to the first Backrooms post on 4 Chan.

10:42 Stanley Parable is such a fun game. If you have not played it, what are you doing? You have to play. Don't do it right now, don't pause, finish the episode and then go play The Stanley Parable. It's so much fun. There's also the video game Super Liminal that came out in 2019, but the demo was released in 2013, so again, prior to the birth of the Backrooms. But by the way, if you haven't played the if you haven't played, gosh, if you haven't played Super Liminal, also very fun. However, it opens up with a warning about experiencing derealization and disassociation due to the nature of the dream. Setting of the game. Which I definitely experienced like I was binging that game. I was playing way too much of that game during kind of like a period of depression, you might say. So I was definitely experiencing some of. Those side effects so.

11:31 You know, just in moderation. Just play it in moderation. That's with all things anyway. You may have also seen or at least be passingly familiar with the Apple Plus series Severance, which came out in 2022, which has been said to be directly influenced by the Backrooms as well as the game Stanley Parable. So both of those pieces of media influenced Severance. So that's going to give you a really good idea of what the Backrooms are. And then of course, American Horror Stories. American. Horror stories, plural, Which is the spin? Off to American Horror Story Singular, which I did not know, but in 2024 it even had a Backrooms episode that aired in the third season of American Horror Stories. So if you've seen that, you have a pretty good idea what the Backrooms are.

12:18 But here's the thing. We can't discuss the Backrooms without first discussing liminality. Here we are. Liminality and liminal spaces. This will be brief ish probably. We'll see. Here we go. All right, liminality and liminal spaces. Merriam Webster, don't you love when like essays start with this? Merriam Webster defines this word as but here we go, Merriam Webster. Merriam Webster has this to say about liminality. Of relating to or being an intermediate state, phase or condition in between or transitional. OK, not super helpful. Thanks, Miriam. But if you've heard this word, it might have been associated with a few things.

13:02 Maybe some spooky photos of bright, cheerful but utterly abandoned children's play rooms. Or maybe a spooky photo of a hotel pool or an abandoned mall, or of an abandoned staircase. Abandoned is a big theme. That and the staircase goes on forever and it's spooky. And you don't know why it's spooky because it's not actually made necessarily to be spooky. It just kind of is. It gives you a weird feeling, kind of like, you know what the feeling it gives me is when you take a nap. This is unscripted. When you're a teenager and you take a nap after school or something and then you wake up and you're kind of disoriented and time has passed, but you didn't notice because you're asleep. And now like the it's kind of dark outside and maybe like. There's like the.

13:42 Smell of dinner happening and you're just kind of disoriented and the mourning doves are happy, you know what I mean? I don't know, just this weird kind of in between stage. Anyway, that's the vibe, OK. You might have also heard of liminal horror. Like I think I think Lovecraft is technically liminal horror. OK, so if you're into Lovecraft, you know what liminal horror is. Or Tehen King's The Langoliers. There's a throwback or even The Shining. Also Stephen King, though I haven't read the book. So I'm actually not sure if liminality is kind of a thing in the book or if it's just Kubrick being Kubrick. But the movie sets and cinematography of The Shining are deeply, deeply liminal, so just keep those images in mind.

14:25 But before we used the word liminal to describe creepy photos and media, liminal was first used by Arnold von Hinnip in 19 O 9A French ethnographer and folklorist to describe the concept of rituals, working life's transitions such as birth, puberty, marriage or death. There is the pre liminal separation, the liminal transition and post liminal incorporation. These stages move an individual from one social status to another. Much like how staircases are the in between stage, between where you started and your destination. It's a transition. Thinking of the backroom's photo, it's a huge empty room devoid entirely of furniture or any signs of life.

15:09 So it's clearly this in between stage, something stuck between the before and the after that we're not really meant to see. We don't actually know what the before was or what the after is or who it's for. Hennett went on to explain that the following could also be considered liminal. The passage of people from one status to another. Initiation ceremonies in which an outsider is brought into the group. Passage from one place to another, such as moving houses, moving to a new city, etcetera. Passage from one situation to another, like beginning university or starting a new job and graduating high school or university. Passage of people from one status to another, like initiation ceremonies or marriage and the passage of time, such as New Year celebrations and birthdays. Or I guess in my case, like a nap after school. Actually, it kind of sounds like Purgatory. You might say this in between space, which actually quick rabbit hole here.

16:03 Here we go down to a strange rabbit hole. So you know about Dante's Inferno. I assume Dante and I go way back, but did you also know that inside of Dante's Divine Comedy, he also wrote Dante's Paradiso? Paradiso. It's Paradiso. He also wrote Dante's Paradiso and also, more relevantly, Dante's Purgatorio. Like Purgatory. By the way, have we talked about how Dante was just writing Bible fanfiction? I mean, because that's literally what this is. You read the Bible and he was like, I'm like, so into the story and these characters and the setting in this world. I've got to write my own story. That's fanfiction. And actually, Fanfix put a pin in that for later too. I told you you're going to need a lot of pens today anyway. Dante's Purgatorio.

16:52 Did you also know that there are 10 levels to the Purgatory Mountain in Dante's Purgatory? That's where you have to like, climb up the Purgatory Mountain. I don't know. But there's also nine circles of hell in Dante's Inferno, which is probably not at all a coincidence that the back rooms have canonically just 9 levels, just like Dante's Inferno. Like hell. But the difference is, is that the backrooms can actually have as many levels as Infinity levels. How does that work? We'll get into it. But was that not just like a great segue into the backrooms? Back to the backrooms? I feel like it was pretty good because here we go.

17:32 Now we're going to discuss liminality and the backrooms and John's hobbies. So the concept of the backrooms only exists because of the increasing interest in liminal spaces. I know that sounds a little strange because earlier I told you that the backrooms kind of popularized liminal spaces, but just give me a second, because the interest in liminal spaces actually seems to have been born on the website Tumblr around 2016, which was an excellent time to be on Tumblr. Text posts and image posts grew in popularity, steadily talking about liminal spaces and liminality, with this one thread actually doing an excellent job of explaining liminality, to the point where I'm not actually sure I needed all the background that I just gave you about liminality. I probably could have just read this to you and you would have picked up the context and figured it out. But listen, it's fine here.

18:20 Here's a list of liminal spaces from Tumblr. Hospitals at midnight. Empty parking lots. Playgrounds at night. There's a theme. Your friend's living room wants everyone but you as asleep at night, laundromats at midnight. You see the theme galleries and art museums that are empty except for you. Presumably this is during the day, but it could also be at night. That would actually be scarier. Anyway, also, I loved this one. Here's another space that can be liminal the lighting section at Home Depot. And as soon as I read that, I was like, you know. What? Yeah, that's it. That's going in the notes. I think that's a very accurate, that's an accurate liminal space. And of course we can add to that list. A strange empty room with yellow walls and wallpaper and dingy carpet. Moist, dingy carpet.

19:05 Excuse me? AKA the original backroom's image. Because like I said, that image was not posted for the first time in 20/19. It had been around since 2011 or 2012. And even the post on, like I said earlier, the post on 4 Chan specifically asked for like places that make you feel disquieted or whatever. It didn't ask for liminal spaces because that phrase was still not super popular outside of I think really, honestly Tumblr. But the aesthetics, the visuals, the feeling, people were really into it. We just didn't have that term. But for nearly ten years, that backroom's image of that yellow room had been circulated all around the Internet. And yet it wasn't until 2024 that some. Nerds, I mean sleuths.

19:51 Sorry, figured out the source of the photo. And listen, I I'm not disparaging nerds, I'm just saying they got to know their. This isn't news to them anyway, the source of the photo where it originally came from, because it was a mystery since from 2019 to 2024 it was a mystery that people were chomping at the bit to solve. I mean, hundreds, possibly thousands of people online were playing Internet sleuth trying to track it down. It was a big deal. And then finally, someone in 2024 figured out that the original photo came from a former furniture store, Rohner's Home Furnishings in Oshkosh, WI.

20:31 Sorry, I can't. My grandmother was obsessed with Oshkosh overalls for my younger cousin. This is Madam from the Future. Sorry. Let me use the full government name. Oshkosh. Begosh. Oshkosh Begosh. Who came up with that? Hold on, no I'm not going. Nope, I'm not going down there rabbit hole Madam, please continue. Okay, Madam, strange ways from the future out. Dilly dude. Dilly dude. Because like my grandpa always wore, he might do adults wear Oshkosh? Because my grandpa always wore like denim overalls, coveralls. What's the difference? Let me know, Madam strangers at G Multicom, the difference between overalls and coveralls. Anyway, my grandpa always wore them. And so, you know, it's cute to like dress his grandson up, you know, like a little mini him.

21:17 But that's all I associate Oshkosh with anyway. Oshkosh, WI. I can't take it seriously. Let's start this sentence. Over a former furniture store, Roaners Home Furnishings in Oshkosh, WI was being renovated by the current tenants, a company called Hobbytown, AKA John's Hobbies, who's host who hosts indoor RC car racing for nerds. Oh, I mean, no, I do mean nerds. Again, they know they're nerds. This isn't news. The photo was originally taken to document the renovations made on June 12th, 2002, shot by a Sony Cyber-shot digital camera.

21:57 So actually, it might not technically be retro yet. I think it has another year before it becomes retro. I'm pretty sure now John's Hoppies is still around in kicking. Well, I don't know if it's kicking. I think they're kind of struggling. So if you're near Oshkosh, WI, swing by. Go ahead and swing by. Because you know what? I took a peek at their Google reviews and they did not disappoint. Listen to this five stars. Hey Google, I was writing a review about this awesome RC place and some of these reviews on the backroom's place and that's all my son has been talking about. He wanted to know if you have any more. Photos of the backroom's place. Anyway, I went here a while ago with my cousins when they lived in Wisconsin. Cheers.

22:38 Amazing. Chef's kiss. Also five stars. This is a really nice place. The only downside is that I tripped and I cannot seem to fire. The only downside is that I tripped and I cannot seem to find a way out. I've been here for the past week and a half and it looks all the same. Also, someone chased me and it definitely wasn't a human. OK ha ha, very funny. But no seriously, John's Hobbies has completely embraced the backroom stuff because they'll give anyone who stops by a tour of the original backroom's room backroom's room backroom. It's fine. Which is now a giant RC car racetrack. So go go and support the backrooms people in Oshkosh, WI. Maybe wear some overalls when you go. OK, wait one more.

23:24 Last review this is 3 stars, three stars, which pause. Here's the thing fight. I don't tell me I'm right, all right? I'm I'm right about this. Five stars is like this is exactly. This is great. I had a great time. It was, it's a good experience. So many people reserve five stars for like the most perfect thing ever. So even if they love it and they use it everyday like on an item or like they wouldn't, they had a really great time. They're like, well, but like it wasn't like the world's best time. So I'm only going to give it a four. What are you talking about? 5 stars? It's not asking one out of five, five being and we're only reserved for you see what I'm saying? So I cannot first of all, Oh, that really gets me when anyway, 3 is terrible, Three stars is terrible. So many people think three stars is like that's fine. No, three stars is a problem.

24:18 Three stars is a problem, especially as a business owner. If you leave a business three stars, but actually you didn't have that bad of a time. You've just given them a headache. Anyway, three stars from and I'm going to name this guy. I didn't name the other people. I'm going to name this guy Ethan. That's his real name. I didn't make it up. Ethan left this three star review on John's hobbies. No 4 wheel cars allowed. I had a foot long car, but it was 4 wheel drive and they allow three foot long 1/8 scale cars on the track, but not 116th 4 wheel drive. Go away, Ethan, go away. You know what, Ethan? I hope you no clip out of my face.

25:00 And Speaking of no clipping, let's get into the lore and mechanics of the backrooms. So you know how it says, you know if you're not careful and you no clip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the back rooms? Well, if you're curious what no clipping is, it's a word that the youth has come up with to explain how you know, like in a video game, you know when you mess around at the edges of an area or like you're at the walls of a place in a video game and your character kind of like disappears halfway through the wall. Or sometimes actually like, and it's called clipping, like where you clip out of the wall and then you're either like in complete blackness or nothingness because you know the game designers didn't intend for you to ever do that. And that wasn't.

25:43 Actually supposed to happen. Or no clipping can also just be ignoring the bounds of the game entirely to access whatever areas you like. So like with a cheat code or something, you know, you can just like move through walls and you don't have to worry like a ghost basically. Oh, like a ghost. So that's what no clipping technically is. But isn't it interesting that, like, between glitches in the Matrix and no clipping and NPCS, which is a term that I've talked about in a previous episode, I feel pretty confidently that I did a rant on this, all of these terms from video games or like, you know, the Matrix. I still sci-fi whatever. All of these terms from fiction is the point. It's just weird that these terms have all been adopted the way that they have.

26:24 Like a glitch in the matrix is now just something weird happening like you find. You find an extra pair of neon green socks in the dryer when you know for sure that you have only owned one pair of neon green socks, but now suddenly you have two and you know you didn't ever buy a second pair. That's a glitch in the matrix. That's not you having a fallible memory. That's a glitch in the matrix. And then NPC or non playable character or non player character in a video game is someone that's like giving you a quest or something, you know, like they're, they're programmed to just say the same thing over and over and over. And they're solely there to serve the main character and they have no autonomy or free will. And they are subhuman, especially compared to you, the main character. But now NPC is used to describe people who are just boring or are seen by.

27:10 All of these. People out here thinking that they're the main character, which they're not, but they all think they're the main character. And they see these other people who they perceive as boring or not having an inner world, which I think is so incredibly dangerous in a slippery slope. And I don't like how technology is making people think of other people like they're just lines in code or seeing them as less than human, or to think that something they can't explain is seriously a glitch, like in an actual video game, or like we're in a simulation, just like in the Matrix, you know, to talk about. Derealization and depersonalization like warning warning Will Robinson. But then now we also have no clipping being applied outside of video games too, like applying no clipping to our reality, implying that again, we're just in a simulation or the world is more like video games than we truly understand. Again, like we're in a simulation and in this reality that we live in by the backroom rules. You, yeah, you, you listening?

28:10 You can no clip out of reality and into an alternate reality that goes on for Infinity, or at least. 600 million square miles, which feels close enough. Because. The whole earth. I looked this up. You know I did. The whole earth, including oceans is only 197,000,000 square miles, so the backrooms is 3 times that size. Hold on, what's? What? Hold on? OK Google? OK Google, What planet is 3 times the size of Earth? Sorry, I don't understand. This is not good radio. Google lady, you don't even have a name. OK. It looks like Neptune is the closest in size to being three times the size of Earth. It's actually a little more than that. It's actually a little more than that. So picture Neptune, I guess.

29:01 Neptune seems really small to me, though maybe because it's so far away it seems really small. So it's actually not as impressive of a comparison as I. Was thinking but listen earth is only 197,000,000 square miles and the backrooms are like 600 million square miles so. It's just, it's just, it's just really big, OK? It's really big. OK, Look, the point is, is that the Backrooms is huge. It's massive. And canonically, and by that I mean if you base this entirely only on the 1st post that was ever made about the Backrooms, that's as much space as it is. That's it. However, the extended universe that people have created around the pack rooms basically means that there's just an Infinity amount of space.

29:45 But we'll get into that more later. You know, put a pin in that. You can use one of the other ones that we've revisited. I'll allow a reuse of a pen just this once. So I mentioned Kane Pixels or Kane Parsons famous short film on YouTube. Well actually there's 22 of them, but we're just going to talk about the first one. The OG called the Backrooms found footage. Honestly, go watch it when we're done or I will allow you to pause and go watch it on YouTube right now I'll allow it just this once again, just this once I'll allow it. I was actually I was shocked at how good it was and how invested I was. It's only 10 minutes. Did I mention that it's only 10 minutes go watch it it's 10 minutes.

30:29 I was shocked at how good it was. I don't know. I just you know, I well, I don't know. I just assumed the back rooms was, you know, I don't know, like slender man esque, like slender man adjacent and I'm not really into slender man. So I started this research without having watched the video first, Then a little bit into the research. I was like, I should watch this before I continue and wow, it I I'm of course I was like, I I get it. I understand why a 24 tapped this kid because did I mention Cane Pixels is 16 or he was 16 when he first made his first short film and he was 19. OK, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm going off script. It's just so impressive. Go watch it if you haven't watched it. The movie does open specifically with no clipping.

31:12 That is exactly what happens to the guy in the back rooms. Short film by Kane Parsons. And it's honestly just so terrifying of a concept because I was actually just telling my therapist the other day this, she also likes horror movies. And so we kind of discussed them sometimes, you know? And I'm like, man, horror is so subjective because, you know, people have said that Hereditary is like the scariest movie they've ever seen. And I watched it and it was disturbing. Like it was depressing, but it wasn't. That's scary. Honestly, it didn't scare me that bad. But like I've said on here before, The Blair Witch Project scares me to this day, even though I know it's not real anymore. But when I first watched it, it was so terrifying to me, you know?

31:56 So even now it's scary. And The thing is, is it's like, if it can happen to me, then it's way scarier. If it can happen to me, it's it's way scarier. Hereditary. That's probably not happening to me. Because. You know what I mean? That's probably not happening to me. But the backrooms, The backrooms could happen to me because of the concept of the backrooms is just that. You can be living your life completely oblivious. You don't even know that the backrooms exist. You can just be living your life and then suddenly, inexplicably, through no power of your own, you, you take one step wrong. You're in your kitchen, you're cooking dinner. You accidentally take one step back at just the right angle or the wrong angle, and then you are plunged into this alternate world with creatures that are hunting you and there's no way back out.

32:54 Your life is permanently altered forever. You're probably going to die there, and there's literally no way to protect yourself from it. There's no way to stop yourself from no clipping into this other world. It's genuinely scary because it's invisible and you can't stop it, and there's no way to know when it's going to happen. And if you're a regular listener, you might be recognizing this. First of all, wait. If you're a regular listener, hello, welcome back. I'm so happy to have you. And you might recognize this is a familiar topic to me because invisible entities, you know, invisible danger that you can't see whether it's coming or not, sounds a little bit like demons. Like maybe there's a demon watching you at all times and then they're going to strike and you won't be able to do anything about it.

33:45 And it's a evil demon. It is invisible. And you might Your world might be changed. Flip turned upside down. Forever. So I think the backrooms is a terrifying concept. And I think if I was a child when the when when the backrooms came out, I think I would have been terrified of it. And I can tell you right now, lots of other people are out there being really scared of the backrooms too. And do you know why I know that? Because what Google search term do you think started spiking shortly after the release of Cane Pixels first Backrooms viral YouTube video in 2022? I'll give you a second to guess what the Google search term is. What do you think people were Googling after the release of this viral Backroom short film? If your guess was are the backrooms real? You win.

34:33 Oh, boy. No. Listen, I'm not shaming anyone for asking that. Genuinely. I'm not shaming you for asking that. If you're a child, maybe. If you're an adult, I don't know. It's fun to. You know what? Why don't we ask? There's no shame in asking. You know what? I'll allow it. There's no shame in asking that question. Or the backroom is real. Because like I just said, I fully believe that the Blair Witch Project was 100% real when I was a teenager, so I can't knock any of them for thinking that this is true. And it's fun to believe in this kind of spooky stuff, but then someone inevitably takes it too far. Because remember the Slender Man stabbing? Remember that? Yeah, not a good time. Where Peyton Leutner, 12 at the time, was stabbed 19 times by her so-called friends Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weir also. 12 who claim to have.

35:20 Done it to get in good with Slender Man like it's a slippery slope. You know, it's just a little bit of a slippery slope because I bet you when Slender Man was big, there was a huge spike in Google searches for is Slender Man real? I will not be shocked. Look, I'm not, I don't want this to happen, obviously, but I will not be shocked if there's a similar violent incident surrounding the back rooms. Obviously there's not like a slender man to to impress, but I just feel like, you know, I don't know, do you see what I'm saying? It's like hard to put it in exactly, exactly into words. And this part is a. Little less terrifying than attempted murder, but I. Just, I just hate to think of people alone at night, wide awake and paranoid that they might no clip out of reality if they just shift wrong into their bed. You know, because again, being afraid of invisible dangers, like demons for me as a child, for this new generation of kids, they're obviously afraid of getting trapped in the backrooms.

36:23 But being afraid of invisible dangers is just. Torture for your nervous system and mental health. It is awful. I mean, not everyone will be affected like that. Not everyone who reads about the backrooms will be terrified of no clipping out of reality. But Long story short, no, the backrooms aren't real. Probably, probably, definitely, maybe not real. I mean, I can't prove that they're not real. Who can say, really? No, me, I can say they're not real. They're definitely not real. But they are fascinating. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. No, no, no, no. There are hundreds and thousands of fans. So I mentioned earlier what feels like five hours earlier now. So I mentioned earlier that the Backrooms, which in itself, which is itself a creepypasta to begin with, has spawned more creepypastas.

37:13 Which have we talked about this? OK, pause the term creepypasta. Here we go. The term creepypasta came about as a riff on the term copypasta. Copypasta one word of course is kind of a jokey term for having copied text and pasted it somewhere else, AKA kind of stealing it and reposting it like a meme. But specifically it's only text like on 4 Chan or other forums. So instead of copy paste, you just change the E to an A and you get copy pasta. And it's kind of, it's funny, it's clever, but then when people started copy pasta ING creepy stuff, they started calling it creepypasta instead of copypasta, which I think is actually even more clever. So if you've ever wondered what is creepypasta, there it is. There it is for you.

37:59 In a little tiny, strange nutshell, pistachio. Here we go from the creepypasta wiki. Since its initial spark of interest, the Backrooms has garnered its own independent fan base, providing additional aspects to the setting in the form of writing fan imagery, fan art. OK, let's be clear. Hold on, put a pin in it. Video game adaptations and even several film adaptations. The Backroom's wiki serves as a database for relevant side projects and fan inventions. Fan inventions? Fan inventions. Now humor me, would you? Do you? Can you? Do you mind humoring me for just just a few minutes? If you could do that, I would really appreciate it because I want to share with you just a couple takeaways before I get too much further before I get to 1 of the pins that we set earlier.

38:50 Because you what? Listen, you can go find a bunch of other podcasts and YouTube videos. Don't until you're done with this one. Don't. But then you can because there's lots of really good ones out there. You can find a lot of other podcasts and YouTube videos talking about the back rooms, but I can tell you this, you're not going to find these strange takeaways anywhere else. OK, this is it. You're not going to hear it anywhere else. So just humor me. After immersing myself up to my strange eyeballs in the back rooms for literally weeks now, and before that, having been marinating in lore about another Internet born urban legend, the Mimic, I've come to two conclusions. One that I teased in the Mimic episode #1 the youth yearns for fanfiction. Because tell me, why is creepypasta based on existing concepts like Slender Man and the Backrooms other than just fanfics?

39:42 Tell me writing fiction based on something that someone else created because you're a. Fan of it, even if it's just world building. It doesn't have a host of characters like a cinematic universe is fan fiction. It's literally the definition of fan fiction, which is totally fine. I love a good fanfic. Some fan fiction is better written than some published books that I've read and paid for. But let's just call it what it is. Let's call fiction based on someone else's creation by its full government name Fan. Fiction. I do wonder. I have been wondering this and I want to hear your thoughts about it too. I do wonder if it's like, is fan fiction as a term sort of perceived to be feminine, but creepypasta is somehow seen as more masculine so it's more acceptable and doesn't feel so frivolous. I feel like I'm really onto something there. I feel like that's why it's not called fan fiction. And it's not just because, well, this is scary. This is the, you know, and it's meant to be shared. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's something more here happening because this is just fan fiction or fan art, how they say. Fan creations.

40:49 OK, fan art. Let's call it what it is. I mean, either way, my biggest take away from the backrooms research and the mimic research that I've done is that the art of the fanfic will never die. It might just get rebranded. So I have I so I have deemed what we're seeing with fans of not just mimics, but also the backrooms. I have deemed it fanficification where they take something and they just run with it. They go improv with it. Yes and yes, and but some of them kind of blur the line between fiction and fantasy and reality. I need someone who is smarter than me and more academic to do some sort of thesis or something on fanficification.

41:34 Or are you? Have you? Do you know what I'm talking about? Can you say this in smarter words? Let me know madamstrangeways@gmail.com. Anyway, my second take away that I want to share with you guys. The youth yearns for video game manuals, OK? Because back in my strange day, video games came with a little printed manual that had like illustrations and lore and like info about the game and like how to play the game. And I remember like Super Mario Brothers for Nintendo having these illustrations. I specifically remember the one with who's the little pink Dino guy that's that shoots eggs. I remember the illustration of him and I remember just flipping. Through the whole little book over and over and over again because we didn't have smartphones back then. So, you know, that's just kind of what you did is flipping the same books over and over.

42:21 But in addition to the little printed manuals, there were also actual strategy guides before the Internet ruined them. Like it ruined so many other things where you could look up entire maps of every level in the whole world. Or you could also look up a bestiary which lists every single bad guy or all the monsters, and you could look them up and look at their stats and look at their photos and stuff. And when I tell you that there is so much discourse online about the Backrooms and what creatures reside there, and just the arguments that people get into online about the different levels of of the Backrooms and how, no, this one level doesn't have this monster in it because that monster is only on this other level. And they're deciding facts pulled from wikis that are written by other fans about the Backrooms.

43:06 They just want a. Guidebook. They want maps, they want bestiaries, they want a little printed manual. And they want a little. Strategy Guide. And if they just had those printed in their homes, I just think they would be a lot happier. So let's bring those back. OK, There, I had to share those before getting too much further because something is wrong with me. I don't know what else to say. I don't know how to explain it. So I kind of touched on this a little bit, but fans of the Backrooms have created their own levels, OK, Like different levels of the back rooms, Like like the first picture that you see of that yellow room in John's Hobbies, That's one of the levels. But there are many other levels but in the original Canon of the back rooms.

43:50 And by the way, when I'm saying Canon, if you're not chronically online or like in fandom spaces, when you say Canon, you're using it like they do in like Catholicism or religion, where you're saying like this is true to the original content and lore and that's different from like fan stuff that's being created or whatever. So in the original Canon of the Backrooms, which I will be completely honest about and I will admit that I am not sure who has dubbed them Canon much like. Religion much like Catholicism. Who decides? Who decides? I don't know but in the original backrooms lore there are only 9 levels and 9 is cool. Like I said, Dante's Inferno AKA hell. 9 levels of hell, 9 levels, Well, nine circles of hell, 9 levels of the backgrounds.

44:41 But in a setting where there's 6,000,000 square feet or whatever of rooms to be trapped in, why stop there? Why stop at 9:00? So people didn't stop. They created their own levels. That's what the fanfics that they're writing. If you're wondering how can I write a fanfic about the back rooms, it's just a room. No, this is how they do it. They create their own levels with their own settings, their own lore, their rules, and their own monsters and creatures. And like some levels you can't be attacked in kind of like creative mode in Minecraft if you've played that, whereas in other levels you definitely can be killed like in survival mode in Minecraft and I don't. Think that Minecraft is a lot more influential to the Backroom's creation than it seems at first blush.

45:22 Like talking about just liminal spaces. I see a lot of discussion online about Minecraft settings being liminal spaces, and in Minecraft you've got an endless option of settings and locations. Levels, you might say. I just feel like there's something there. Anyway, back to people creating their own backrooms content. I mean fan fiction and fan art and fan movies. Usually when it comes to fan made stuff, it's based on intellectual property, right? Like ATV show or a movie or a book. It's something that's created and has trademarks and copyrights, like Anne Rice, who is famously litigious, by the way, even for just people writing fanfics. Or so I've heard.

46:02 Allegedly. Please don't sue me, Anne Rice. But for Creative Commons or public domain content like the Backrooms, there's no one to own the trademark. There's no one to send out cease and desist. Because with the Backrooms, the anonymous user who created the Backrooms hasn't been identified. Which is crazy because if I was the one who? Created it. I would be insufferable if that was me. Let me tell you, I would be knocking on a 24's door. Hello. I need my check, please. Maybe they'll surface now. Well, I know. Oh, what do we think? Do we do we think that they did do that and that a 24, like quietly gave them money or they were like, prove it.

46:43 That's probably more likely a 20. Four said yeah, right. Yeah, right. How convenient. Prove it. You can't because it was on 4 Chan, so you can't. Like it's all anonymous. There's no way to chase it. Anyway, the question is who owns the backrooms? Not like, not like the, the world, you know, not like in, in a world in which the Backrooms exists. I don't mean like what supernatural entity owns those backrooms. I mean the IP, the intellectual property, who owns it? No one actually owns it. There's no copyrights or trademarks. So far, except hold on a second hold, please.

47:24 OK, I'm back. OK. The United States Patent and Trademark Office Trademark Search. Which is a lot of words in a row. Shows 5 live trademarks OK, four of which are pending and yes they were all filed after the creation of the Backrooms in 2019. OK, there's a Backrooms TCG which stands for like the card game which I just looked. Up and it's exactly what it sounds like it's a trading card game the. All by the way, spoiler alert, all of these backrooms, patents and trademarks are all based on the backrooms. OK, so we've got like a backrooms TCG, then the term just backrooms. Not like the backrooms, but just backrooms like one word. But looking at who owns the trademark, it looks like they're Polish because of the amount of ZS and YS and. XS and marks over OS.

48:13 But they list that they do everything from video games to selling umbrellas and key chains to oh, they're they're a feature film production company. And OK, yeah, they're definitely Polish. It's called Gigant Films has bought the term Backrooms as a trademark, which is which is really weird. Anyway, Gigant Films is apparently Polish for giant films, but they haven't really made many movies and they don't seem like a particularly giant film company. Anyway, more trademarks. There's Benny's Backrooms, which I thought might be some kind of casino backroom thing, but no, it actually is just the About the Backrooms entertainment services, namely providing online video games featuring an action horror game featuring a monster lurking within maze like levels.

48:57 OK, it yeah, it's just about the Backrooms. There's also Escape the Backrooms, which is another video game situation. And finally, there's a trademark filed for Backrooms Escape Together, another video game. And these are all from different people. Well, hold on a second, because can we go back to Poland for a second? Because Gigant films, this Polish company, their trademark really is just the word backrooms, which is really weird because the more I think about it, the weirder it gets because typically they don't let you just trademark like. Actual words. I mean, I'm not a strange attorney. OK, so I guess what do I know? But I've dabbled in legal teams working with trademark searches, and that's not normal to me.

49:39 But what about you? Are you a strange attorney? Let me know Maddow strangeways@gmail.com Is this weird? But I feel like this Polish company kind of swooped in in 2022 after Cane Pixel shot the backrooms into popularity and then got the trademark in hopes of like. I don't know. Suing all the creators that use backrooms in their stuff like. How How? What are they doing? How do I find out? Like I want to know like what are these other OK. You know what? Stop. OK, Madame Brockovich, calm down. Let's get back to the Backrooms at large. So lots of money is being made on the back rooms, and for once it's not owned by a giant mouse or some other conglomerate. Shockingly. OK, so I mentioned that the horror giant ate horror.

50:20 I'm going to enunciate that. So I mentioned that the Horror Giant A 24 has a movie about the back rooms coming out. What you might not know, except that I spoiled this earlier and didn't realize that this is where I had it in the script, is that the creator? Of that crazy famous series on YouTube is that the creator of that crazy famous series of YouTube short movies is the one directing at Cane Pixels AKA Cane Parsons who when he was 16 prior to uploading his first Backrooms. Video he was just an Attack on Titan Stan. He was he was he was a fan and he was making fan content because that's what he was doing is he was uploading content about his favorite anime.

51:02 He was uploading videos that he was making about Attack on Titan. This is this is what I'm. Saying it's fan videos, it's fan. See what I mean? Even Kane Parsons, that's all that. That's all he was doing. It's crazy because now he's been catapulted into, I don't know, directed him. It's great. Now he's directing a feature. It's crazy. OK, crazy. Moving on. OK Kane Parsons created his little mini movies in Blender, which is a free and open source 3D computer graphics software, and he also did it in Adobe After Effects and it looks seriously amazing. I had no idea what to expect when I watched the first one, but I'm serious. I was so impressed. It looks amazing and he was just doing it for the love of the game.

51:45 He wasn't even thinking that he would get paid for it one day and become a director of an actual movie. Kane's first Backrooms found fitted video was uploaded on January 7th, 2022. Within just two weeks it had 8 million views. 8 million views in two weeks. As of early March 2026, it's at 72 million views, which is an insanely high number to me. So I had to immediately pull up the most viewed YouTube videos because I needed to get a comparison. Like. How does this compare to the other most famously most watched YouTube videos and OK, apparently baby shark.

52:27 Baby Shark. Is the most watched YouTube video ever of all time. Sitting at 16.7 billion with AB biz views. Hold on here we go quick rabbit hole Baby Shark was published June 2016. So as of the day of me writing this on March 7th, this part of the because you know I finished it on the 13th. I'm telling you this is this is a labor of love. OK anyway, on March 7th when I was writing this it. Had been up for 35150 days. I said that really strangely. 3550 days. That means Baby Shark gets 4,704,200 and 25 million views a day on average.

53:10 Let's compare that to The Backrooms. The first Backrooms video, released 1520 days ago, averages out at 47,628 views a day. That is still a lot, considering that The Backrooms is hopefully not playing on loop on sticky iPads covered in spaghetti sauce across the country like Baby Shark is. But what really led to the popularity of the Backrooms in the 1st place? Surely there's a universe out there in which Cane Pixels made these videos, but they just didn't catch on because the Backrooms just weren't that popular. So what? Was it that made them stick so we know the first reference to them was made in 2019? Or do we? That's allegedly because in my research, I kept coming across many different people passionately insisting that they were aware of the back rooms by that name around 2012 or 2010. Here's what I'll say.

54:03 I think it's possible that by the very nature of creepypasta, you know, copy paste, copy pasta creepypasta. I think that it's possible that it existed prior to 2019 and that it's possible we have no record of it because we've lost so much of the historical data from sites like 4 Chan and other forums that aren't easily crawlable. But also the sheer amount of content posted on 4. Chan is an issue. But man, I looked and I looked. I combed through Google searches in small chunks like from 2. 1004 to 2005. 2005 to 2006. 2006 ad nauseam. I could not find any results from before 20/19.

54:44 I was doing things like searching for maximum Humbuzz because that's a really interesting phrase. You know, when I was also looking for backrooms and I tried a few different things and honestly, by the way, Google search sucks now. So if you're doing your own research and you're trying to figure out when something was posted, if you just look at the results, it makes it look like, oh, they were talking about the Backrooms back in 2011. But then you actually click the link and you go into the link. And no, it was definitely not posted in 2011. Like the site that you just clicked on that page didn't even exist until like 2020, you know? And not a single one of them predated 2019. I also checked the Internet archives for any references to that text like Backrooms or Maximum Humbuzz, etcetera, and nothing prior to 2019 popped up.

55:31 So while I do think it's possible that the OG Backrooms creepypasta was written prior to 2019, I also think that maybe people are just experiencing the Mandela Effect, or as I've said countless times on the show, their memories are just fallible because all memories are fallible. But back to the research. I also looked at the history of the usage of the term no clip and no clipping in paranormal terms like using the term to describe something in real life and not just something happening in a video game. So I had to go again to 4 Chan and you do see it being used as far back as 2013 and 2014 and the paranormal forum describing the movement of creepy things not in a video game.

56:17 Whereas before it was purely a word to explain something in a video game. Then looking at the term backrooms is one word. Google Trends had a little blip of interest in the weeks following the 4 Chan post in 2019, then a small little blip about a year later in 2020. But then interest slowly rose until it quickly. All of a sudden shot up. Starting December 2021 and then exploded in January 2022 when Kane Parsons released his movie, his first short film on YouTube. And then it's been steady ever since with some peaks and valleys here and there. Just to be expected that interest that happened a month before Kane Parsons short film could have been from a Backrooms mod that was released for Minecraft.

57:00 Now it was released in August of 2021, but maybe it picked up traction and then it spiked in December. There was also a game on Steam and it was free called the Backrooms game. So the free thing probably helped. And then especially considering that in December, people, especially teenagers and probably early 20 somethings, we're on holiday break from school with way more time for video games, so they might be playing more of the Backroom's mod for Minecraft and that Backroom's game. And then, like I said, because the Backrooms are now public domain, well, they've always been public domain. ND game creators and hobbyist coders can make their own games using the Backroom's lore and imagery without worrying about getting shut down or sued.

57:42 And with fans constantly updating the wiki and creating more free content for free perpetually, it's honestly. Kind of a genius to use that to base your game on. And on top of that, you have a built in fan base and people love the backroom. So people are looking for backroom stuff. It's kind of genius. So when I was searching trying to figure out why did all of a sudden this spike in interest on Google happened right before the Kane Parsons video, I found a heap of videos from a very popular Backrooms creator called Brugley. But when I opened a new tab to Google if Brugley was a popular YouTube because. I don't know Google auto suggested. Is Brugley A Backrooms entity?

58:22 But can't they be both? Can't Brugley be both a popular YouTube and a Backrooms entity? So if you're from the Backrooms, does that make you a backroom Chin room chin? Like I'm thinking like Laos because there's an S at the end. So like Laos is Laotian or would it be backroomies? Let me know. Let me know. Are you from the Backrooms? How do you want to be referred to? Let me know Madam strangeways@gmail.com. Anyway, I guess Brugley could have had a viral Backrooms video in December of 2021. It's possible. I really don't have an answer and it's really unsatisfying and it's actually really bothering me. I even. Posted on the Backroom subreddit on Reddit, obviously asking if anyone had been around in the fandom back in 2021 just to see what happened and if they had any ideas, and I didn't get any leads. Either way, come January 2022, when Kane Parsons uploaded his first short film, The Backrooms took off like a bat out of hell or out of Dante's Inferno, you might say. You might say that the Backrooms no clipped into Internet viraldom Internet virality.

59:34 They no clipped from the Backrooms to our reality virality reality. I've been recording too long. This is long. This is long, but there we go. We're that's it. Finally, Jeez, finally, finally. That's that was one strange dive into the back rooms for you. And there's so much more I could have talked about. I didn't even talk about the creatures. I didn't talk about any of the specific levels except for the first one, which I don't even think it's level 1. It's like a different. It's not numbered. It's not. Do you see what I'm saying? There's so much that I could have talked about. I could have talked about more of the lore from the Caine Parsons 22 episode. Nope. 22 movie. I don't know what you call that. Anyway, 22 part series, I didn't talk about any of that. There's so much I could have talked about more I don't think you want anymore.

1:00:23 But if you do, let me know metalstrangeways@gmail.com. I mean, I'd be happy to yap more and to look more into it, but I feel like hopefully this has given you at least some insight into what the back rooms are. Now. This is coming out before the movie comes out, but I will have to wait a little bit longer until it's available for streaming because I am past the point in my life where I will watch movies with strangers that have no manners. I will watch. Them in my own strange house where I am the only one with no manners. And. It's OK, I can do whatever I want. I'm a big movie pause. Or have I talked about this guys? I will, I'm, I will chaotically pause.

1:01:05 I'm I'm like, you know what? I'm not really. Focused on this movie anymore I'm going to pause it for the night and then come back the next day randomly. I don't wait for like I'll pause. I would mid sentence. I'll be. Back later, bye. So I understand that I am the psychopath in some situations. Now, not to worry, next week we will get back to our regularly scheduled Strange content, our regular True Strange Story episodes. So that means if you have a true strange story of the unexplained that you'd like to hear read on the show, I'm going to need you to e-mail it to me. e-mail it to me right now, madamstrangeways@gmail.com. Let me know anything strange, anything unexplained. I want to hear about it immediately. Write me out.

1:01:47 And I can't wait to read it. Remember that you can feel afraid and not be in danger. You're safe here with me, probably. Thank you for. Joining me for more true strange stories of the unexplained. I'm running A1 Madam Show here, so please do me a strange solid and follow the podcast. Leave me a rating on Apple or Spotify and maybe even join the Patreon at patreon.com/madam Strange Ways for bonus content. Madam Strange Ways is produced and narrated by me strangewaysthememusicisbymarina.ryan@marinamakes.co Cover art is by Andrea Chisel Roldan at Cult of Teddy on Instagram. Every strange story is shared with the permission of the author.

1:02:46 You can submit your own true strange story to madamstrangeways@gmail.com. See you soon, she said ominously. Is what looks like a retro photograph. Photograph. Digital photograph. Good God. But you know what? If you're still listening, are you still listening? Are you still listening? Because if you are still listening, I want to reward you. Yeah, you. If you're still listening, I'm going to send you a Madam Strangeways sticker.

1:03:30 E-mail me madamstrangeways@gmail.com if you want to. If you want to trust a stranger with your mailing address, I will happily mail you a Madam Strangeways sticker just for getting to the end of this episode. But patrons, were he not? You know why? Because, well, you'll have already gotten this by this point. But when I'm recording this, you don't know yet. But you will be getting a new fancy sticker soon. And by soon, I mean in the past, because this is being recorded before you have it. Anyway, if you've gotten this far, e-mail me madamstrangeways@gmail.com. Tell me that you got to the end. What's the, what's the secret word? What's the it's not just backrooms. No clip.

1:04:13 You know what I think that's I think that's you know what? Here's what it is. E-mail me the phrase Backrooms Fanfiction. Because that's what all this. Is go ahead, just e-mail me that and I'll give you a free sticker. And I appreciate you making it this far.